On the morning of May 3 last year, Steven Greenoe was waiting in the departure lounge at Raleigh-Durham airport in North Carolina for a short hop to Atlanta, where he would transfer to a Delta transatlantic flight to Manchester.

Hearing his name called over the public address system, he approached airline staff who told him that security staff wished to speak to him.

The officials from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), a branch of the US Department of Homeland Security, were concerned that screening of Mr Greenoe’s hold luggage had revealed “multiple firearms”.